The Story of A Legend
The name Genghis Khan is familiar to most people and synonymous with “badass conqueror.” Like Alexander The Great, he’s one those historical figures that seems to have as much myth surrounding him as truth, but both continue to fascinate us generation after generation.
In late September of 2007, Director Sergei Bodrov directed a pretty amazing film named Mongol about the life of Genghis Khan, with the focus being on Khan’s life before coming the unstoppable conqueror he did. We reviewed the film last year on DVD. Turns out, earlier in that same year, in Japan, Director Shinichiro Sawai directed a film called Blue Wolf: To the Ends of the Earth And Sea. That same film has now arrived state side with a slight name change. Having seen it now, it’s for all intents and purposes a very similar film to Mongol in terms of subject material and film quality.
The two-plus hour film takes us through the life of Khan, who was born named Temujin. As a young child, Khan was trained in the way of the bow and taught to fend for himself. When his father is murdered at a young age, Khan changes, and as a young adult he begins uniting various Mongolian tribes spread out across Asia. His decisive, ruthless ways tear down border after border as his rule and legend grows.
Yet the film does not focus on violence or Khan’s “darker” side. While it is rated R for several violent scenes, the movie does make it a point to also share Khan’s more humanistic side, too. If I recall correctly, Mongol was also similar in this way in that it tried to educate audiences and dispel the myth that Khan was simply a bloodthirsty conqueror. While telling this type of story might not be as exciting, it likely is more historically accurate and it still makes for a good movie, just not one that I could stand to watch very often.
Kahn Invades Blu-ray
The Special Edition Blu-ray contains quite a few extras which I will list shortly as well as the feature film in full 16:9, 1080p glory, with two complete audio tracks to boot. The image quality isn’t bad at all; most of the film takes place outside, on the countryside, during the day and I didn’t notice any major technical flaws; in other words, it looks about as good as you would expect for a recently filmed movie, but it’s not quite outstanding. The costumes and other visual arrangements were convincing enough although on their historical accuracy I cannot comment on.
Sonically, the film is intended to be viewed with the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Japanese track, with English subtitles. Alternatively, you can enable the English 2.0 track and go without the subtitles if you desire. Not surprisingly, Genghis Khan is a better experience with the original Japanese audio.
As for extra features, there are quite a few. According to the packaging, there are about 147 minutes of additional features, all in SD and with Japanese audio with English subtitles. The features include:
-Filming Journal
-Peek Behind the Scenes
-Great Plains of Mongolia
-Premiere On Stage Greetings
-Premiere Screenings – Mongolia (with interviews and press conference), World Premiere Screening, Hong Kong Screening
-Uncut Battle Scenes
-Original TV Spots & other FUNimation Trailers
I didn’t find many of these extra features to be particularly interesting, but for bigger fans of the film, it’s easy to see the appeal of the included features like the footage at the various film screenings.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
